In which I finally make what is probably an obvious connection

The past several days have been absolutely miserable. There was a joint in my body that wasn’t complaining, and quite loudly, too. And I was nauseous. I was inflamed. You’d think the nausea would have clued me in, but I am stubbornly dense. Anyway, pain. Of the beaten to a pulp by giants and then rolled over by heavy machinery that won’t get off me sort. I only have Darvocet for pain relief, because this bad of pain this much all over isn’t an everyday thing, for which I am thankful. And even really bad pain can be ignored to an extent if I can stay distracted. Being distracted, though, is impossible when one wants to sleep.

Monday night, I finally realized that my head was also hurting, that someone was coming along every few moments and wailing on the right side of my skull, sending my eye shooting out the socket. Well, it felt that way. And that is when it dawned on me that maybe I ought to take a Zomig. It worked marvellously well. I actually fell asleep within an hour and slept through the night.

So. Hmmm. Now I’m thinking that my crapped out neck maybe leads to the migraines, and the migraines magnify every other distress in my body. It also helps that the pressure front that was bearing down finally broke into actual storm. However, since I can’t command the weather, I will instead follow up on this migraine-joint pain connection.

Fuzzy

It was the Monday before Christmas and Carapace wanted me to take her to see the lights and get in some last minute shopping. So we started off with a nice lunch and made our way into The Big City.

On the way, I started to feel it slipping over me. Pain? Maybe. I’m not particularly good at identifying pain. Discomfort, yes, discomfort. Tired, so tired. Patella slipping out of place–annoying, potentially ruinous of the night’s plans, which involved walking through a neighborhood to see the lights.  But tired, so tired. So very, very tired. And uncomfortable. And nauseous. Everything comes through as if in static. Sight, sound, touch. So much fun to be driving like this, oh, such a delight. No stress, no stress.

When we get to our first destination, I take a Zomig and stay in the car, try to sleep. A car pulls up in the next space, waiting for someone, it seems like hours, pouring out pounding hip hop. I want to vomit. I sleep for five, maybe ten minutes. I give up and go into the stores. Maybe I am feeling better. Maybe that’s why I can’t sleep. I’ll shop. But the lights are wrong, there are lines, there are people moving faster than I can process. My stomach starts rolling again.

Carapace sees me and tells me I look bad. I wonder what I look like to other people who aren’t her. She thinks I look like Death, that I have no color in my face, that my lips are white. I feel like Death, so it is good to get some external validation. Do other people see me and see the same? Is that why they move past so quickly? I lie to Carapace, telling her I feel a bit better, and that we can go to the next shopping center. She’s having a good night, this time. And I think she rather likes it when she is the one whose brain isn’t misfiring.

We get to Target, and she no longer believes I am doing any better. “You need caffeine,” she says as she hands me a migraine tablet. I protest that I’ve taken the Zomig, that maybe it will start to work. “Doesn’t matter.” She’s insistent, and I’m in no shape to argue. If she’d told me I needed arsenic, I’d have relented just as easily. “We need to get some coffee in you.” I buy a coffee at the in-store deli, but it is their last cup of the day. It’s weak, old, and not enough.  She’s bought her last few items, and I promise to stop for coffee as soon as we find a place. 

I drive on auto-pilot, taking the literal roads of least resistance. Other drivers are being extra courteous as I slow down, trying to suss out a place to go, a place that won’t be too loud, too bright, too unlikely to have coffee. I’ve about given up when I spot a Whataburger. Assuming they have coffee, it will be in copious amounts, because they don’t do small. And, while brightly lit and garishly colored, they don’t do “ambient music.” I’ve had all the ambient music I can take for one day, so fluorescently lit orange it is.

We linger over coffee. I discover that the annoying scratchy crinkly sound I’ve been hearing all day is my knee brace. I have a window now. I’m not completely better, but I can function like this. We leave. Young men in the parking lot are singing about sex. They notice us as we approach and suddenly change their tune: “Fa la la la la, la la, la la.” I get in the car, laughing. It’s the best I’ve felt since lunch.

We go see the lights, and they are fun. I’m glad not to have missed them. One more store–groceries. Now Carapace is down on the floor with a seizure. Her window is closed for the day. Mine will close again soon. Time to go home.

&*$%#!!

Damn. It’s cold. I know, I know. It gets cold every winter. But every winter, I take the dip in temperature as a personal affront. People, it sleeted on me on the way home last night. I had to stand outside in the sleet and hail when I got home, covering the plants as best I could, hoping that they don’t all just shrivel up and die.  Poor, poor plants. I’m a bad plant mommy.

And, apparently, my cover is completely blown. I blame the norther. Its howling winds and freezing temperatures, combined with Hell Week at work, seem to have left me actually looking as bad as I feel. OK, maybe it was the cervical collar. Or the knee brace. Or me having to take a lie-down on the back office floor because back went out. Or the ashen look on my face ams I fought down nausea and headache most of the evening. Maybe the boss is right and I am falling more often.

If only I could get someone to reduce my left shoulder before my left hand gets anymore numb. But, sad. I’d usually ask my housemate but he’s actually sick right now, and I’m completely what passes for healthy in my gene pool. And in many ways, I feel better tonight than I have in several days. I don’t know if this is because the front is actually here now instead of coming in, or if I’m feeling some low-grade giddiness antecedant to headache. I guess I’ll find out soon enough.

New Doctor visit

When I moved in March, I kept right on seeing my old doctor, despite him now being 15 miles in the wrong direction. But now he’s closing his practice in the area, and I figure if I am going to get used to someone new, it should be someone I don’t have to schedule an extra hour of travel time to see.

The new doc is a friend of the old one, so I am hoping he will have some person skills in common, since I like the old one. The new patient visit was yesterday. Summary:

Office is cramped. I don’t know how they get people in wheelchairs or scooters to the back. Maybe they move furniture. The scale is inconveniently right in front of the doorway to the hall. Speaking of which, I’ve lost 10 pounds since this summer. I’ve also lost .75 of an inch since the last time I was measured, way back in my twenties.

Dr. M. is nice. He listened to me describe my current condition and past things that I thought he should know about that weren’t asked on the new patient form. He said that the scar on my nose from the basal cell surgery was well done and acted like he could hardly see it, which either means he is extremely polite or in need of glasses.

He also prescribed blood pressure medication for me upon the one reading, and directed me to buy a blood pressure cuff. It seems a bit much to me to prescribe blood pressure medication off a reading at a new patient visit, but maybe there is something else he noticed or something in his notes from my previous doctor. We’ll see. He will find I am a reluctant meds user, so he’d better keep the number of prescriptions low. Already, I misplaced the bottle and had to go on a safari to find it, and I hadn’t even taken any yet.

I told him that my cholesterol was high the last time it was measured, but that I didn’t want statins because of the associated muscle weakness, and that I couldn’t afford any more muscle weakness than what I have. He promptly tested my muscle strength, which revealed itself to pretty much not exist. Ah, the old “squeeze my fingers” trick. Try to break them off, he said. Bwa-ha-ha! Hey, I’m just happy that I can complete a grip. Then he tested my arms and legs, with similarly sad results. Unless he can pull a magic potion out of his bag that will instruct my muscles to actually build, there is not going to be any useful change. (I can see it in his eyes, the question forming for next time. Would physical therapy help? No. No, it won’t. But it will be exhausting and painful. Thank you.)

And he renewed my pain pill script, which is good, because we are coming to the time at work where we are standing most of the day. Except when we are bending.

And he wants me to keep a migraine diary, because he thinks maybe I should be taking a preventative. Oh, this will be hard, remembering to keep it. And knowing what to say.

OK, so I begin with that today. Woke up. Left side of head, behind and to the side of eye, hurts. Treatment: Ignore it. Breakfast: cup of coffee with cream, gluten-free waffle with butter. Head still hurts.

Oh, one more thing. I bought that blood pressure cuff right after the visit, since I needed to go to the pharmacy anyways. Checked blood pressure last night at the close of work. Also checked my vegetarian boss’s. We have the same blood pressure.

Assistance requested

I need help! I’ve begun a filk, but only have the chorus and one verse down. Now, to the tune of the Eagles’ “You Can’t Hide Your Lying Eyes,” please join me in writing

You Can’t Drive with Migraine Eyes

(chorus)
You can’t drive with migraine eyes
Because the lights
Are way too bright
Thought by now
You’d realize
There ain’t no way to drive with migraine eyes

(1st verse)
Silly you forgot to bring your Zomig
Had to make do with coffee and Naproxen
Another drive
It’s going to be a long one
You squint at the road while your head begins to scream

Please add to the desecration of this classic rock ballad by contributing in the comments.

Days 3 and 4, and this looks like it will be worth it

Wednesday, Carapace came to work with me and she made sure I ate just like I was supposed to. I had a piece of cheese, some proscuitto, and an onion for breakfast; beef, chicken, sour cream, lettuce and a bit of cheese and salsa for lunch; then a dinner of beef, zucchini, and mushrooms. For snack, I had chicharrones.

Today I didn’t eat breakfast, what with needing to go to the store and to pay some bills before heading off to work. But lunch was roasted chicken, baby greens salad, a little cheese, and sour cream. I haven’t eaten dinner yet tonight either, as it approaches midnight, though I just had a snack of chicharrones and sour cream with habanero salsa. I also had a Coke Plus today, which I had never had before. It is a diet Coke with vitamins and minerals. Other colas have been doing this for decades, but Coke just started this recently.

I split the Coke with Carapace, who was at work today, too, even though she thought she wouldn’t be able to make it as she was anticipating a major brain meltdown. But it never happened! Sure, she was in pain and lost partial control of the right side of her body, but she never once went unconscious! Oh, let her tell it herself….

a bit of whinging

Poopy poopy poop poop.

OK, first, I think I have tracked down my migraine-inducer to the latest GF flour I was using. Back to corn and buckwheat! But in the meantime, I have a mouthful of cold sores and the intestinal distress that lets me know that things don’t look so great on the inside either. One week and running. So to speak. Maybe by the end of this week, it will finally all be out of my system. But I have a lot of this flour leftover. Any ideas on what to do with it?

Second, it’s hell time at work, which means a lot more physical movement than my joints like. Everything hurts. Except for the things which are tingly with pinched nerves. Things like, oh, my hands.

Third, I’m not very happy with people purposely getting in the way of me doing things that make my work place more accessible or with them making comments about how I do things. I don’t care if it isn’t the way you do things. It’s the way I do it.

But fourth is funny. My housemate just woke up screaming and prancing around from a giant cockroach having run into his pajamas. I only have pain. He has a cockroach in his drawers. I think I’m ahead.

Raaaahr! Monster gets its reward

Raaahr! Monster gave me plenty of sympathy and care during my last migraine, helping me go to work and sleep and everything I needed to do despite the fact that I was nauseaus and hurt 5 days running. As a reward, Raaaahr! Monster got to do fun things with me and MD this past Tuesday, when we went to the Witte Museum in San Antonio. Sadly, we did not get to take pictures of Raaaahr! Monster at the human body exhibit, but R!M still got in plenty of mugging for the camera.

By the way, the Witte was pretty accessible, though parking still stinks. Wheelchairs are free to use, which is nice. The Pecos River exhibit is annoying for wheelchair use, since the floor is made in imitation of the caves. And they could do with some better thresholds to help get from one floor surface to another. There’s a children’s area that doesn’t appear to me to be accessible except maybe to an adult who is watching. A kid using a wheelchair would be left out of the fun.

(If anyone wants a Monster of their very own, MD handstitches them inbetween rolling her eyes in her head and incomprehensibly mumbling. Email me and I’ll let you know what her current inventory is.)

Have I mentioned I hate migraines?

Sunday, I developed a migraine to go along with the shredding feeling in my joints. As a front moved in during the night, I lay awake hoping the weather would get worse, faster, instead of hanging on and on and on.

And so I got up Monday feeling as bad as I went to bed on Sunday. And then Monday was the worst, busiest, most hellish workday in quite some time. Afterward, I couldn’t even drive home for three hours.

Surely Tuesday would be better, right? Well, at least work was better. And the migraine had moved into my abdomen, clenching my head only every few minutes instead of constantly. And my joints were doing better.

Wednesday, I finally saw the doctor to get something for the migraine. There is no way that medication is worth $240. If I hadn’t already been sick to my stomach, seeing that pre-insurance portion of the bill would have made me nauseous all on its own. As it was, I had to pay $70 for something that didn’t do a darn thing for the abdominal migraine–unless you count the ability of a med to be vomited to be something worth paying for. Work went OK, in between the puking. Oh, and Doc? I appreciate your assumption that I would stay home and rest and take care of myself, but if I was to do that every time I felt pain or nausea, I’d need to go on disability. And how would my rent get paid that way? Not very well, thank you.

My migraine finally mostly broke Thursday. Yay! Did that expensive medicine do it, or the fact that the freaking front finally finished moving in? I suspect the front.
————–
Edited to add:

My friend Dr. Kindberg says that most migraine medication taken after a migraine has already started in earnest will take 24 hours to work. So maybe it was the Zomig working that broke the migraine. I’ve used it earlier on since, and have managed to ward off any lengthy pain, despite having spent the past month in the throes of moving house, which has disrupted all my routine. Still, that’s damnably expensive stuff.